Trudy Schuett over at Dean’s World just posted a doozy of an idea, but got the math wrong by six digits. The idea was to foregoe all the banking bailouts and just give every American a million bucks. She claimed a cost of 300 million dollars- that’s where the six missing zeroes popped up- try 300 trillion dollars. Better spin up those printing presses!

Still, there’s some merit to her original notion- don’t bail out the banks or the auto makers, bailout the people. None of this paltry crap with $600 or $1000 “stimulus” payments. I don’t know about you, but that money went straight to my creditors. I’m sure they appreciated it, but it sure as hell didn’t stimulate anything. Now, $10,000 or $50,000. and we’re talking some radical changes in behavior, such as paying things off and freeing up income for discretionary spending.

Hell, why not have the government simply pay off every first mortgage on a primary residence up to a max of say $400,000? If we’re going to have the government step in like this, make it count, but don’t go handing money to companies and banks who couldn’t help themselves even when they saw what was inevitably coming down the road. People have been talking about this financial meltdown for at least five years that I can recall, so why reward them for not doing anything about it?

So if they must give away billions or trillions of dollars, why not give it to the people instead? Try some Trickle UP economics for a change?